A Pandemic Response for Peace and Freedom
“Populism is the great beneficiary of inefficiency. Without a virtuous response … authoritarian regimes will have free rein to thrive and rebuild walls — or wage war.”
It is not easy to step back and gain perspective on a battle that is raging on the home front for all of us and has not yet reached its peak. However, I do want to share some of my thoughts on the COVID-19 pandemic, especially its context.
Rereading some of the Perspectives that I have been writing every year for nearly 40 years as an introduction to the Institut français des relations internationales RAMSES report, I found this observation, dated 15 July 2008: “Today we can only state one thing with certainty: without a drastic and swift adaptation of global governance, major world tragedies will once again become possible and even likely.” That is why I started the World Policy Conference, the first of which took place in Evian on 6-8 October 2008 in the aftermath of the Lehmann Brothers’ meltdown. Today, as then, I consider the 21st century to have begun that year.
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